


i think i'm made of stone (i should be feeling more)

by borrowedtime



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Lena is sad I am sad this is sad, because why not, fluid Lena aka bisexual lena, post 2x18
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-25
Updated: 2017-04-25
Packaged: 2018-10-23 20:13:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10726404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/borrowedtime/pseuds/borrowedtime
Summary: Lena feels so cold, like it's seeped into her bones and her marrow; worse, it has become her. Or maybe it was always there, underneath precociousness and a burning desire to prove herself. She doesn't feel anything, she thinks she should feel something.





	i think i'm made of stone (i should be feeling more)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Made of Stone" by Daughter. 
> 
> Set post 2x18
> 
> Pls bear in mind I have seen that a grand total of two clips from 2x18, so facts may by slightly off.

Lena feels so cold, like it's seeped into her bones and her marrow; worse, it has become her. Or maybe it was always there, underneath precociousness and a burning desire to prove herself. She doesn't feel anything, she thinks she should feel something. 

But she doesn't. She just feels the slight shakiness in her hands and a startlingly clear voice when she speaks. An absence of feeling. 

A distant part of her - a part buried, a part stolen or a part dismantled - thinks she should be howling with grief. She should be unable to work, unable to function. Instead, she's ushering new business deals - lucrative business deals - and sorting through work that is probably best left to Jess. She thinks maybe she's overworking herself so that she doesn't have to think about it, but that's not true either. 

She thinks about it constantly, about Spheerical Industry and about the nanotechnology, about Jack and about her, about herandJack. She just doesn't feel anything about it. 

Maybe Lilian was wrong, maybe she's more like Lilian than she gave herself credit for. She won't cry about Jack, about their almosts and their maybes, she won't grieve a situation that never quite worked out; about all situations that never quite worked out. She thinks, sitting at her desk typing her way through emails at two in the morning, that a normal person would cry about it. She's not sure if she has the capacity anymore. 

"Don't cry," Lilian would whisper, "Luthors don't cry." 

"Don't cry," Lilian would demand, "Lena, nothing is worth your tears."

"Do not show fear. Do not cave, do not crumble."

"If you ever want to be a Luthor I never want to see your face look like that again, all tear stained and ridiculous." 

It started when she was four - and she was lonely - and continued right up until she was sixteen and she left for college. 

Lena isn't sure there's an event in the world that could make her cry. Kara dying, maybe, but even that she can't say for certain. 

Lena opens the top drawer of her desk, pulls out a bottle of whisky - a gift - and considers a glass as she twists the bottle open. 

Cold, her hands are cold. Have they always been like this? Has she ever noticed before? Her veins are prominent, blue, and with smooth fingertips she forgoes a glass altogether and raises the bottle to her mouth. 

To Jack, she hears her mind echo distantly. The other parts of her, the visible and the audible, scoff around a mouthful of whisky.

"We do not grieve the dead, Lena. You're very lucky to come and live with us." 

She sips again. If it burns, Lena doesn't feel it.

"Your mother is gone, dear. I'm your mother now." 

She closes her laptop, swivels her chair to face the skyline. She sips again. 

"You're making a start up company with that boy, Lena? What on earth are you thinking? You're barely of out college." 

Her sips devolve into gulps and she thinks, can people grieve silently?

"You want to find a cure for cancer? Oh, how noble. Come back to me when you can find a cure for the aliens that still populate our earth." 

Her vision is hazy but she's still frustrated with herself. She takes in even breath and tries to imagine what grief would feel like if it coated her tongue. Why can't she feel anything?

"Do you love him? God, of course you do. It's a blindness, Lena, a folly. Well, at least he's a man."

Love, a concept. Love, a blindness. Love, a mistake. There was only one kind of love - the love of power. And God, Lena had that. Lena has that, if she lets herself. Of course it feels good to be the best, to be better than anyone else.

God, it felt good to waltz into that house, and discover that though he trained and though he tried, Lena was still better than Lex at chess. Like she had been the day they brought her home. God, it felt good to see the twist of disgust in Lilian's face - to make her mother see that she could never take Lena's intelligence away from her.

And here she is, the youngest CEO LuthorCorp - God, no, LCorp - has ever known. The youngest CEO of any companies she knows, at all, ever. Twenty four. 

Twenty four and drunk on whisky. 

Twenty four and unable to grieve the deaths she feels should be crushing her underneath their weight. 

Grief, the word doesn't feel heavy; not like it should. It feels light, it feels like a word and not a concept. It feels alien, an alien situation. Lena watches the slight tremor of her fingertips and takes another swig of alcohol. She stands up, sways and walks over to the window. 

"Grief." She tries it out. Her tongue feels swollen, from more than just whisky. "Noun. Intense sorrow, cause by someone's death." 

Her breath fogs up the window a bit, and she has half a mind to trace some pattern before opportunity evaporates. 

She doesn't. She takes another sip. Enough, her mind screams, enough. It's just too much - enough. Enough of what, she doesn't know. She's never known. She's so smart and so young and so capable and she doesn't know. She doesn't know how to feel. Why does she feel anything? Why do all of her emotions feel fake? Why does all of this feel like pretending?

Someone is pulling her strings, she thinks. Someone is making her legs walk to her couch, strings pull and she's sitting down. Strings pull, her hands curl slowly into fists at her side. Strings pull, and her dress rides up a little as she crosses one ankle behind the other. Habit prevails, even when drunk. 

She doesn't know how to tell anyone that when she smiles it feels fake. Genuine happiness - Kara bringing her donuts, those late nights with Jack where all their theories would go wrong and it would deal to yet another explosion followed by laughter. It's all fake, it's not real, she's not real. She doesn't know how to tell anyone that she's been trained to manipulate so well that she doesn't know how to make a move, a gesture, an expression without first considering how it will best benefit her. White knight. That's what Lionel called her. 

"Lena, they won't expect you. You're young, you're a woman. Use that to your advantage. You're our white knight. All their attention will be on Lex. Be our white knight. They'll believe it, they'll want to." 

It turns out, she did use that to her advantage. But not against who he'd thought she would. Lilian had never expected the daughter who lived in Lex's shadow to be the one to undermine her plans. Instead she became the white knight to SuperGirl. To the aliens in general. To this day, she still doesn't know why she did it. No, she does know why she did it. For Kara, of course for Kara. Lilian was going to murder, yes, to commit genocide, yes, but Lena stopped her for Kara. She doubts the alien knows that. Or would let herself to think that. 

Let the alien who is still pretending not to be an alien in Lena's presence be blind. That's fine, Lena can handle blind. Lena can handle vague flirting and well placed smirks. 

What Lena can't handle is real emotion, apparently. Which is exactly why she forces herself not think about the fact that Kara has a boyfriend, even as she rekindled her relationship with Jack. (He was kind and he was good and she had missed his presence in her life). 

She drops the whisky, she thinks. In any case it's not in her hand anymore. Sure enough, there's the bottle. On the floor, by some miracle it managed not to land awkwardly and spill all its contents onto her very expensive plush carpet. 

Right. Well, great experiment, she thinks. At least she knows that getting drunk doesn't make her any more emotional. As if she needed any proof of that. Still not sad. Still can't cry. Okay. Yes. That sounds about right. 

She thinks her ears are buzzing with alcohol for a long while, until she jolts with the realisation that no, that's not her ears technically. That is her phone. That is her phone ringing on her desk. Right, she should be answering that. It could be someone important. 

She crosses to her desk, or at least she thinks she does because before she knows it her phone is in her hand and she's answered it with a crisp hello. 

"Lena." It's Kara. "Are you drunk?" 

Right. So not as crisp and clear a hello as she thought it was. Lena takes a breath. Two breaths. Realizes she hasn't spoken yet and opens her mouth. 

"I'm fine." It's true. She's fine. In true Luthor fashion, cold and unfeeling, but fine.

"Are you sure? To be honest, I didn't think you'd answer. I couldn't sleep and I thought I'd call you." 

Lena wonders if that's a lie. Wonders if Kara used her X-Ray vision to see that Lena was still in her office. Wonders what Kara would do if she called her out on it.

"Are you okay?" Lena asks instead. 

"Oh, yeah, I'm good. Just worried, you know." 

"About?" Lena knows she probably shouldn't press, but the word is out of her mouth before she can stop it. 

"You." 

"Oh." 

"I am really sorry, about everything." 

"I know, Kara, you said that before." 

"I just... Wanted to say it again, I guess." 

"Okay." 

"Are you sure you're alright?"

Lena considers saying yes, lying, trying to keep her image. She considers saying no, being honest, leaning on Kara the way a true friend would. They both have their advantages.

She deflects, instead. "You know the answer to that."

"Yeah. Are you still in your office?" 

"Yes." All the joy she normally feels when Kara inquires about her whereabouts doesn't appear. And that should worry Lena. Does worry her, she thinks, somewhere in the part of her brain that isn't swimming in alcohol. What does she feel? Why can't she feel? 

"Did you wanna, maybe, come over to mine? I'll make us tea or decaf or something, and we can talk. Or not talk." 

Lena laughs, more sardonically than she means to. She curses to herself, inwardly, immediately after. She tries, she tries not to let Kara see this side of her. The side that says to her mother that she knows she doesn't love her. The side that is sharp, and sarcastic and full of unfriendly smiles like the shark she was raised to be.

She expects Kara to hang up, or utter out apologies, or not speak at all. She expects Kara to stumble, to transform into a nervous wreck over the side of the phone line. What comes instead is: 

"It won't solve anything, it might not even help. But I don't want you to be alone right now." 

Lena's not sure if it's the alcohol, or is Lilian has somehow possessed her. But she's cold, God she's so cold. "What's that supposed to mean?"

When Kara speaks again, it's soft, as if she knows what it's like to constantly be to losing people. 

"You've been alone for far too many tragedies in your life. I don't want you to be alone for another."

Oh. Lena's not sure how to respond, how to explain the ache in her ribs that claws up to her throat. 

"I'll call my driver. Be there in fifteen." Her voice is astonishingly level.

Lena pulls up to Kara's apartment, her driver doesn't complain about the late hour or ask why she's showing up at another girl's apartment in the dead of the night completely wasted. Lena makes a note to give him a raise, even if his assumptions about the way her night is going to go will invariably be incorrect.

Somehow, through some miracle or the fact that Lena had taken off her heels in the car, Lena makes it to Kara's front door. It's open before she can knock. 

Kara smiles, very gentle. "I heard you come up." 

Lena thinks she should probably make a joke, but can't or won't and doesn't. Kara ushers her inside. They're sitting at the table before long, cups of tea in their hands. 

"You're not wearing any shoes." 

Well that's certainly not how Lena expected Kara to break the silence. She waves a hand, it's meant to be dismissive and relaxing. It's the move she uses in the board room to clear doubts and establish her orders. Considering how drunk she is, it just comes off as more like a useless flapping hand than anything else. 

"I took them off in the car on the way over." 

"Do you want slippers?" 

"It's fine, Kara. I'm not bothered." Truth be told, she's not.

Lena waits for Kara to speak, but she doesn't. Kara appears to be trying to phrase something she wants to ask in the softest way possible. As if Lena isn't used to constant cruelty, as if she didn't grow up around blunt opinions and sarcastic expressions. 

"You can ask me, Kara. Whatever you want."

"You don't have to answer." Kara takes a breath. "Did you love him?"

Lena smirks. Her default. Power play. "Yes. Why are you asking?"

Kara considers her expression, but doesn't rile up in defense like Lena thought she might. "I just... I know what it's like, to lose someone you love. You can - you can tell me about him, if it helps. We can punch things, if it helps. You can even cry, if it helps." 

All the strength with which Lena held herself up seeps away. God, Kara is so gentle. "Thanks for the offer." 

"I meant it." 

"I know, Kara."

Kara takes a sip of her tea. Lena feels the heat from her own, but her hands are still chilled.

Kara watches her, Lena's carefully neutral expression and hands grasping at the mug. "I thought you'd cry, when I came to visit your office." 

Lena feels the sharpness of her teeth, the poison on her tongue. "Do most people cry when you comfort them over their dead lovers?"

She feels too much like Lilian and hates herself for it.

Kara shrugs. "No, it depends." 

Lena sighs. She knows she'll lose Kara's friendship if she keeps this up. It's a worthwhile venture, this friendship, a voice like Lionel whispers in her ear. Best to switch gears and maintain it.

"I'm sorry." She says, mouth twisting apologetically. "I'm being terrible." 

"No, it's okay. I get it." Kara says, like she doesn't notice the shift in Lena's tone or her attempt at a businesslike posture.

"I don't know how." Lena's voice is small when the words spill from her mouth.

"Don't know how to what?" 

Lena gestures uselessly, trying to form the words and can't, doesn't.

"You don't know how to, oh. You don't know how to cry."

It's all Lena can do, to nod. She feels the pity radiating off of Kara and hates it, but another smaller and faded part of herself almost likes it. The attention. 

"I didn't realize," Kara stops. "They didn't let you, did they?" 

Lena scoffs, averts her eyes. "They didn't let me do a lot of things." 

Like bring home a girl, for one. Like bring home anyone who wasn't a net worth as close to their as they could get. Like choose her own college. Like seek out comfort when she terrified of a storm. Like speak against the family name, the family honor, the family in general. Like cry, like love, like relate to people in a way that wasn't steeped in manipulation. 

Kara's eyes widen. Lena swears. They sit in silence. 

"I didn't mean to say that - out loud." She says, but it's useless. She bites the inside of her cheek. She doesn't feel sad, per se. She feels embarrassed. Her sexual fluidity is not the most heavy of the things she just admitted to, but somehow it's the one that weighs heaviest in her mind.

"You can always be honest with me. No matter what you feel." 

Lena's insides tangle. How do you fight against something imprinted in your very being, into your DNA? 

"Sure I can." She bites. 

"You can." Kara affirms, steel in her voice and her in eyes. "I really will protect you from everything, from anything. Always." 

Lena nearly conjures a smile, but can't. "Even myself?" 

"Even yourself." Kara nods. 

Kara escorts Lena to bed, later, when it becomes apparent that this is the most emotionally exhausted Lena has ever allowed herself to be. She tucks her in, stays with her at Lena's request, sleeps on her side of the bed careful not to touch the other woman. Somehow she gathered that Lena can't handle touch right now. She's never been very good with comfort, something Jack had to warm her up to at slow speeds and with careful questions. 

Lena rolls over, anyway, and watches Kara for a minute while she sleeps. She's too kind, Kara is far too kind to anyone, particularly Lena. Still, Lena thanks whatever force managed to bring this woman into her life. And with whisky in her bloodstream and Jack still on her mind, she lets herself succumb to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> I kind of like the idea of Lena being sexually fluid? I was ride or die for her being a giant lesbian but, hey, gotta work with the canon somehow.


End file.
